decoderringtheatrefandomcom-20200213-history
Justice Served Cold
Decoder Ring Theatre is proud to present the first episode of hardboiled pulp detective action with Black Jack Justice! This week, Jack and his partner Trixie Dixon, girl detective, learn lost love letters and a mysterious client add up to more than meets the eye. It's up to them to dish out Justice Served Cold. Episode Recap The story opens with Jack Justice alone with his thoughts in the office of Justice and Dixon Investigations. His partner, Trixie Dixon, is surprised that he is there before her, but does not believe that he has shown up early. She is right, as he has stayed up all night reading about one of their old cases. Trixie disapproves. Their impending argument is interrupted when a woman enters the office. Trixie instantly pegs her as a society girl wanting to blend in. She originally refuses to give her name. Jack and Trixie ask her to lay out her case in the "hypothetical". As a young girl, the woman wrote romantic letters to a boy she was in love with. He went off to fight in World War II; they continued to exchange letters until she recieved word of his death in Italy. In time she fell in love with and married "a good man". She kept the letters her young love had sent to her, without worrying that her husband would discover them. It never occurred to her to wonder what had happened to the letters she had sent to him; Jack and Trixie instantly realize that someone is blackmailing her with them, and refuse to proceed until they learn her name. She reluctantly tells them that she is Donna Ryan. Donna Ryan and her husband, wealthy industrial Clarence Ryan, are well known, and the case is sure to be a lot of trouble. Trixie calculates whether or not it is worth the money while Jack examines Donna Ryan. He sees how frightened Mrs. Ryan is and, without consulting further with Trixie, agrees to take the case. The letter Mrs. Ryan was sent came with a second note, which read "Reply tomorrow, 8 PM, Metrolite Hotel, Room 314." Jack and Trixie are wary of the note, as it has no other information about the terms attached - not even an amount. Mrs. Ryan asks Jack and Trixie to negotiate the return of the letters, giving Jack and Trixie ten thousand dollars to negotiate with and promising that she can come up with the same amount again the next day if it becomes necessary. After scolding Mrs. Ryan for her indiscretion, Jack and Trixie take the case. Jack and Trixie arrive at the hotel room at 8 o'clock sharp, only to discover the body of their client's husband, Clarence Ryan. Jack calls down to the front desk and asks the bellboy to call the police; meanwhile, Trixie slips down the fire escape to run ahead and warn their client. Mrs. Ryan does not react as expected, coldly telling Trixie that she had given them a retainer and that she had expected them to take care of it and to keep her name out of it. Meanwhile, Jack has been booked as a suspect by the police, although he is released after the bellboy remembers him arriving. Back at the office, Jack and Trixie discuss Mrs. Ryan's reaction to the news. Jack thinks that she may be covering for someone, but thinks that it cannot possibly makes sense. Jack knows that Lieutenant Sabien expects him to find the killer, and proceeds to do just that. Jack and Trixie go to the messenger company that delivered the letter Mrs. Ryan originally came to them with. The clerk, Brian, originally refuses to name or even describe the sender to Jack, but after Trixie asks him again in her own special way, he relents. The man had a medium build, with brown hair and glasses, and a slightly accented voice - as though he had spent the last number of years in England - and he had a shrapnel scar on his left hand, which Brian remembered from his time in the infantry. As Jack and Trixie leave, Brian calls out that the man paid extra for delivery after six. This brings things together for Jack. The man wasn't attempting to blackmail Donna Ryan - he was already in the process of blackmailing Clarence Ryan. Jack and Trixie go to Mrs. Ryan's house and confront her. After much bludgeoning on the part of Jack, she breaks down and reveals that her "darling Mike" had shown up just before Trixie did on the day of her husband's death, claiming that all he had done, he had done out of love for her. Mike was turned over to the police. Donna Ryan left for Europe, and may have lived out her life there. At the end of the story, Jack packed up his old casefiles and put them into storage, deciding that sometimes the past should stay in the past. Cast of Characters |Jack Justice||Christopher Mott}} |Trixie Dixon||Andrea Lyons}} |Brian|Desk clerk at messenger service; formerly in the infantry|Gregg Taylor}} |Donna Ryan|The client|Shannon Arnold}} Places * The office of Jack Justice Investigations. * The Metrolite Hotel, Room 314. * The office of the messenger service. * Dugan's. * The Ryan home. Quotes There are lots of ways to tell if a man is lying, but the simplest is to check if his lips are moving. - Trixie Episode Trivia *The script for Justice Served Cold was about the same length as the scripts for the previous episodes of the Red Panda Adventures, and the episode was expected to fill the same half-hour time slot. However, as actors Christopher Mott and Andrea Lyons spoke much faster than writer Gregg Taylor expected them to, the episode came in six minutes short. *The coffee described in the beginning of the episode was evidently not made by Jack, as it is described as "neither very good nor very fresh". *Justice Served Cold was the first DRT episode adapted into comic format by Addictive Comics *Trixie's middle name is Cynthia. *First mention of the Maretti Poisoning and the Worthington Pearls Case. Links Episode Page - http://decoderringtheatre.com/index.php?id=2006-01-07_JusticeServedCold&cat=bjj Comic - http://www.addictivecomics.com/blackjackjustice/Page-001.html Category:Black Jack Justice Category:Black Jack Justice Episodes Category:Black Jack Justice Season One